The Why Factory

The Why Factory students at CTU Prague take over one of the atriums with slogans for a Bio World.

Winy Maas, the recently appointed visiting professor at the Faculty of Architecture of CTU Fakulta architektury ČVUT] in Prague, will instruct, together with Javier Arpa Fernández, Adrien Ravon, Lex te Loo and Šimon Knettig, two semesters during the academic year 22/23 with the The Why Factory, the think-tank he directs at TU Delft in the Netherlands.

During the Winter semester (Next Planet design studio), The Why Factory will look at the current planetary urgencies and to possible interventions to construct alternative futures for our planet (please see description below). In the Spring semester (Czech Checks design studio), the focus will be put in the analysis of the Czech Republic and the proposal of a myriad interventions aimed at triggering a discussion around the country’s future (description of this studio will follow shortly).

Fall Studio:

Earth is our home; Earth supports us and contains all known life in the universe. But our home is threatened: climate breakdown, population growth, deforestation, pollution, income disparities – just to name just a few – are accelerating tremendously. These urgencies demand action and -more than ever- imagination from all of us, from citizens to designers to policy makers.

It is obvious that it is time to begin thinking about our planet in completely new ways. Both the built and the non-built environment have become fundamentally different in many aspects, but we are still trying to physically define it in the same way as before. And we are almost paralyzed in what seems to be a splintered and contradictory reality. On the one hand cities and communities are highly individualistic and increasingly based on the individual unit, and on the other hand global connectivity and awareness is proliferating in almost all our daily activities. There is a need to find ways of bringing together these two extremities – the individual and the collective – from both ends and both conceptually and practically, into possible constructions.

Fakulta architektury ČVUT]tudelft

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A great excursion day with the students to the Valley by in Amsterdam. Including a review with Winy Maas in one of the appartments, class on the outdoor staircases of the building and a visit to the new Sapiens museum by the Naturalis Biodiversity centre.
tudelft

THE WHY FACTORY PUBLISHES “(W)EGO: DREAM HOMES IN DENSITY”, EXPLORING PARTICIPATION AND GAMING PROCESSES IN HOME DESIGN

How can we turn every dwelling into a desirable home? The latest book by The Why Factory, (w)Ego: Dream Homes in Density, investigates participatory processes and applies them to housing design. These processes establish a negotiation between the desires of each of the residents of a housing block and help determine the design of their units. (w)Ego explores these negotiations through the development of gaming processes that leverage the specific dreams of each resident and transform them into spatial requirements. This way, novel housing typologies emerge within a truly human-driven, dreamy architecture.

This book brings together research undertaken by students from The Why Factory at TU Delft and students from IIT Chicago, RMIT Melbourne and Bezalel Academy Jerusalem who collaborated with The Why Factory.

https://thewhyfactory.com/news/the-why-factory-publishes-wego-dream-homes-in-density/

Architecture taking action: MVRDV and The Why Factory exhibition in Paris positions design as a tool to make the world a better place.

“Architecture and urbanism are calls to action” – that is the central principle behind MVRDV’s newest exhibition, Agir!, that will open at the ArchiLib Gallery in Paris on June 10. Taking its name from the French verb meaning “to take action”, the exhibition examines MVRDV’s work through an explicitly activist framing. The ideological underpinning for this framing comes from a “bucket list” developed by MVRDV, comprising 44 goals for the future of our world, from “biodiverse”, “self-sufficient”, and “green” to “collaborative”, “democratic”, and “beautiful”.

The first exhibition focused primarily upon MVRDV’s broad portfolio of work in France, Agir! presents over fifty projects, positioning the firm’s French work within their broader oeuvre of international projects and research. Each project is accompanied by a punchy “slogan” – inspired by the language of activism and protest – that captures the essence of the project, highlighting how each design challenges the status quo and paves the way for a better future.

The exhibition also includes the work of The Why Factory, the think-tank established at TU Delft by MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas in 2007. Forming a symbiotic relationship with the designs of MVRDV, the research at the Why Factory investigates the future of the city and the planet to produce observations, hypotheses, and statements in a visual and direct manner. The exhibition gives special focus to a presentation of the think-tank’s newest publication, (w)Ego, which will be launched during the exhibition.

“When I founded MVRDV alongside Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries, we were strongly motivated by a desire to do things differently, to make the changes in the world that we thought were necessary,” says Winy Maas. “I am proud to say that almost 30 years later, that spirit is still fundamental to our office – even while the challenges that we face as a species only grow more urgent. This was part of the reason for the foundation of The Why Factory: I wanted something that was independent, so we could research without thinking about the immediate needs of an architecture firm, but which nonetheless could help inform the future vision of the company. With this exhibition we want to challenge our colleagues, in a way: what kind of future do you want to see?”

The projects are printed in chronological order on a 78-metre-long fabric curtain that is tightly folded into the gallery’s small floorplan. This density of information highlights the intensity of action required to tackle the challenges afflicting society, the environment, and the world at large. To magnify this sense of urgency, the exhibited works are accompanied by graphics on the floor that show the condition of the polar ice caps at various moments in the project timeline.

Despite the seriousness of this framing, the tone of Agir! is, at its heart, optimistic. It shows how, through their work, architects can fight against global injustices and presents idealistic architecture not as a mere utopian speculation, but as a pragmatic possibility. This is underscored by the exhibition’s final component; connected to the ArchiLib gallery, via a patio at the rear of the space, the exhibition continues into the ground floor of MVRDV’s own Paris office, which during the exhibition will be open to the public for the first time. Here, the exhibition presents models of projects currently in progress, following the style of Parisian ateliers d’artistes. In this way, visitors not only experience MVRDV’s history of architectural action, but also see actions which are still being taken, in the place where they are being carried out.

Agir! will open to the public on June 10 at the ArchiLib Gallery in Paris (located at 49, Boulevard de la Villette). The exhibition will be on show until July 26; the gallery is open Monday-Friday from 09:30 to 18:00.

Come and join this lecture by Winy Maas in the occasion of the launch of the most recent book by The Why Factory (TU Delft): (w)Ego on June 14.

(w)Ego is the thirteenth book in The Why Factory’s Future Cities series, and follows The Why Factor(y), Visionary Cities, Green Dream, Vertical Village, Hong Kong Fantasies, City Shock, We Want World Wonders, Barba, Absolute Leisure, Copy Paste, PoroCity, and Towers of Choice. Come and join this lecture by Winy Maas in the occasion of the launch of the most recent book by The Why Factory (TU Delft): (w)Ego.

About (w)Ego

(w)Ego investigates the freedom of designing and building our dream home in the dense city. (w)Ego explores the potential of desire-based design processes, prioritizing residents’ wishes in the process of constructing and adapting housing and the city itself. It expands the possibilities of individual fantasy in a dense world by means of negotiation with our neighbours and the environment. In short, freedom and imagination meet responsibility and collaboration. Ego becomes (w)Ego. Moving from fear to curiosity, rigidity to adaptability, egoism to (w)Egoism, (w)Ego explores and pushes the limits of domestic architecture, looking for new ways to live together in density.

Practical info
This event takes place on The Podium, on top of the roof of Het Nieuwe Instituut. The Podium is designed by MVRDV and forms the Festival Heart of the Rotterdam Architecture Month ’22 during June. Book your free ticket through the ticketlink below. Upon arrival, go to the pink RA Month information desk. Visitors for RA Month events in the Festival Heart have automatic acces to The Podium and do not have to book a seperate timeslot.

https://rotterdamarchitectuurmaand.nl/programma/item/wego-book-launch-2/

Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.nl/e/tickets-wego-book-launch-343015537707